Welcome to the Piano World Piano ForumsOver 2 million posts about pianos, digital pianos, and all types of keyboard instruments
Join the World's Largest Community of Piano Lovers
(it's free)
It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!

Excluding these few horribly expensive pianos (except the CP series which offers modeled piano in price rage about 3000$ in Europe, the CA95 costs about 4-4,5k$ and HP-507 5k $ to have some price comparison) there is nothing to buy with modeling.

I always wonder, why there is no piano on the market that: - would be in full DP cabinet - have top action like PHAIII or RG from KAWAI - have MODELED piano sound, not samplet - and some few other software features.

The situation is even worst, because I can buy some so higly developed instruments like Clavia for much less than CA-95 or other piano of this class, but it looks awful and the keybord would be some Fatar, not good piano-inspired action.

However, each of the manufacturers have in their companies some kind of VST instrument, there are many companies that do it as independent like Pianoteq.

And, I cannot understand why even the TOP low range (HP507 etc) pianos are and most probably will be in a long time available with sampled pianos, not modeled. For people like me, and also many of us - who plays on acoustic, the sampled piano isn't tha same quality as modeled.

Resonance plates, and other magic stuff - why just not put the good sampled piano soft instead of some strange marketing tools?Each loudspeaker manufacturer know, that resonance is one of the worst thing, while piano manufacturers are trying something elase to us.Where is the sense?The think that piano lovers are deaf and will don't see the difference?

KawaiJames,Maybe you are able to speak about this in company Can you imagine the CA-95 with modeling instead of sampling?It would be total all-pianos killer, with some marketing of coruse, becase there still some countries in which all people are saying "buy yamaha" and "casio is good in clock not in pianos". And price between HP507 and NU1.

And - each person who has money and mainly - space and condition to have acoustic, will always choose acoustic,so there is nothing to be afraid for acoustic piano sales.

In my opinion, modeling is just not there yet. Even the atrociously priced V-Piano sounds somewhat unnatural and synthetic. IMO, the best thing in modeling world right now is Pianoteq's Blüthner, and even it is miles away from the high-end sampled libraries.

_________________________
"There is nothing to piano playing besides producing the appropriate velocities on the appropriate keys at the appropriate time" (c) qvfarns

I agree, modeling still comes up a bit short. But then, so does the sampled sound in digital pianos.

So, kapelli, my answer starts with a question: For Yamaha or Kawai, what would be the point of replacing mediocre sampled sounds with mediocre modeled sounds? There would be a tremendous cost to convert. But how would a manufacturer recoup the costs, given that the buying public hasn't exactly been clamoring for the $6000 Roland V piano (modeled)? (To be fair, the modeled sound in the V is pretty good.)

I think modeling must improve before it can become widely accepted. After that manufacturers might consider changing.

But this digital piano market changes VERY slowly. I wouldn't expect wonders to come cascading down upon us at the next NAMM show.

Yes. OP is wrong in his/her original statement. V-Piano is fully modelled. Roland's other products using their Supernatural sound engine have some association with modelled technology although it is unclear what exactly. The electric piano presets on the RD series stage pianos are fully modelled.

The RD-1000 from 1986 was fully modelled and that technology continued as Roland's staple sound engine across all their DPs for some years.

The Yamaha CP series (1, 5 and 50) claim to use some sort of modelled elements. I think again the electric pianos are modelled on the CP1, 5 and 50.

The Viscount Physis Piano is another fully modelled piano with acoustic, electric and other keyboard instrument sounds, all apparently fully modelled.

Modelling is the future but there are sonic flaws intrinsic to the technology at the moment, but they will be overcome I have no doubt.

Most pianos are sampled for the same reason that when you call a company and get an automated service it's a recording of a human, rather than a synthesized human voice: It's cheaper, easier, and sounds more natural.

Synthesized piano sound has the same problem as synthesized human voice: it's a complex problem and the solutions we have tend to hang around in the uncanny valley. Recordings are obviously limited but they are cheap and easy, and they sound pretty much right.

I cannot understand why even the TOP low range (HP507 etc) pianos are and most probably will be in a long time available with sampled pianos, not modeled. For people like me, and also many of us - who plays on acoustic, the sampled piano isn't tha same quality as modeled.

First, not every company has the ability to do a quality modeled piano. Companies have their own unique skills and technologies. Second, not everyone agrees with your premise that modeling, at least in its current level of development, is better than sampling. I am among those who think today's fully modeled pianos (Pianoteq, Roland V) are inferior to many sampled pianos. They have certain advantages, but overall, I prefer numerous sampled pianos.

Originally Posted By: kapelli

Resonance plates, and other magic stuff - why just not put the good sampled piano soft instead of some strange marketing tools?Each loudspeaker manufacturer know, that resonance is one of the worst thing, while piano manufacturers are trying something elase to us.

I'm not sure what you're saying here, but it sounds like you're equating the replication of natural piano resonances with undesirable speaker resonances, which is not the case at all. On an acoustic piano, the resonances are part of what makes it sounds as good as it does, and so a lot of effort is often put into trying to recreate those phenomena in an electronic recreation. In fact, one of the first "modeled" pianos, from GEM, used samples for the main piano tones, and used modeling to recreate additional aspects of the sounds, including the resonances.

Modeling of sounds is a complex problem and computationally very expensive to do right.

That's because you'd have to model all of the strings plus all of the interactions between all of the strings, plus all of the interactions of the strings with the resonator (the wood and corpus of the piano or grand piano).

You'd also have to do it for the complete harmonic series of each string/each tone at least until you get to some arbitrary volume/loudness cut-off (if a harmonic is x db below don't model it)

This requires lots of processing power to do "right" (if you can actually do it right with current hardware and synthesis algorithms) which might be prohibitively expensive (just think about what the V-Piano or similar systems cost even though the sound is not that great IMHO).

Current digital pianos already pack a lot of punch with regards to DSP (digital signal processing) power just to integrate basic modelling features (like sympathetic resonance of strings or whatever is super natural in Rolands Supernatural sound engines).

After a certain price point you'll have to ask yourself if the benefit is worth the cost and effort, i.e does the modelled piano sound SIGNIFICANTLY better than a sampled one. If not why bother when a sampled solution is both cheaper and less complex (and it is). If it does sound significantly better then are enough people willing to spend the additional money on that.

You also have to consider space (has to fit inside of the digital instrument), power (should probably work on 120V/240V and without a fan) and complexity of the solution (SW footprint, testability, shouldn't crash).

Right now most of the instruments with modelling are sold at a price point where I could either buy a real piano (granted not a very good one though), a device with significantly more features (e.g. Kronos X, Nord Stage etc.) or a sampled piano that sounds comparable (or even better YMMV) than a modelled one at a significantly lower price (I could buy 2 1/2 Kawai MP10 for one V-Piano)

I also could buy nearly all of the DAW software out there and a good 88 key weighted action keyboard.

With large unlooped samples the sound is "good enough" for the majority of people and modelling doesn't seem to be "there yet" as far as sound and price is concerned. Also most people looking for the "real deal" tend do buy a real piano eventually.

So to make a long story short. You compete against much cheaper sample based systems on the lower end, you compete against real pianos on the higher end and modelled systems don't seem to be "there yet" with regards to both price and "sound experience".

btw. when instrument manufacturers talk about resonance they don't mean undesired resonances due to resonace frequencies of certain parts or due to "resonance cascades".

They talk about intended resonances of for example the strings with the resonator or instrument corpus (which offers for example amplification of the sound) or of the strings with strings that vibrate at one of the harmonics of the basic tone (sympathetic resonance).

Both are processes that would need to be modelled/replicated in order for the instrument to "sound right", since it's what the real instrument also does.

So to reference another thread, if I'd have the choice between a V-Piano and a controller with a great piano action plus a SW solution with modelled or sampled pianos I'd probably go for the controller plus SW.

Or I'd go for "everything but the kitchen sink" boards like the Nord Stage or the Kronos X.

I'm not too into modeling cause I can't warm up to the sounds. But you'd think someone would build a modeling monster just to show that it can be done. Kind of like the first Moog synths. It appears no one has ever demonstrated it's possible?

It is important to separate modeling from sampling. Sampling is always going to sound and play better than a modeled instrument, for the fact that the samples are picked from well known top flite instruments. So, the impression is that you are emulating your dream concert grand. After playing awhile, you start pushing the "this and that piano" buttons, hoping to get "todays'" sound, but oh well, the same sound comes out of those paper speakers. Modeled pianos, have parameters that can continually evolve with your playing style. I have noticed new users initially dislike the metallic sound of some instruments, so they complain. With the knowlege that the user has control over many characteristics of each key, the sound becomes subjective and the ear hears music.

_________________________
"I don't play accurately - anyone can play accurately - but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life."

A modeled DP generates sound when you press the key, just like an acoustic piano. The quality of the sound is not pre-determined from a previous recording, just as an acoustic piano doesn't have its own finite 'store' of sounds to trot out when the pianist plays.

A sampled DP has prerecorded samples, the number of which is finite and therefore limited, no matter how much processing occurs afterwards to produce the eventual sound.

As for which sounds better, well, that's totally subjective.

_________________________
"I don't play accurately - anyone can play accurately - but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life."

Isn´t it the way, that for instance Roland put together in their SN piano sounds the best of both worlds? The difficult to model, but nice to sample attack phase of the tone is coming from a sample, and the difficult to sample, but nice to model sustain and resonance effects are added by modelling? Isn´t this the reason, why the V-piano hasn´t seen a successor for a long time, because its full modelling is not as effective as the combination of both worlds?

Isn´t it the way, that for instance Roland put together in their SN piano sounds the best of both worlds? The difficult to model, but nice to sample attack phase of the tone is coming from a sample, and the difficult to sample, but nice to model sustain and resonance effects are added by modelling? Isn´t this the reason, why the V-piano hasn´t seen a successor for a long time, because its full modelling is not as effective as the combination of both worlds?

Oddly, it's the attack phase of the tone that for me separates full modeling from sampling plus modeling, which is why, for me, the V-Piano is so amazing in its sound generation and the way it emulates an acoustic piano. It gives you precisely what you want in terms of attack, from a gentle stroke of the key to a sharp accent to staccato to staccatissimo, and everything in between - all entirely dependent on, and only on, the way you strike the key.

_________________________
"I don't play accurately - anyone can play accurately - but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life."

A modeled DP generates sound when you press the key, just like an acoustic piano. The quality of the sound is not pre-determined from a previous recording, just as an acoustic piano doesn't have its own finite 'store' of sounds to trot out when the pianist plays.

A sampled DP has prerecorded samples, the number of which is finite and therefore limited, no matter how much processing occurs afterwards to produce the eventual sound.

This isn't a meaningful distinction, though. There is no difference between 5 and the sum of 2 and 3. One required you to compute it on the fly while I provided you with the other.

For both modeled and sampled pianos, for a given configuration and input velocity, the resulting sound will be exactly the same every time. In other words we could record the sounds produced by PianoTeq's computations (or the V) and make a sampled piano out of them. If we do the decent Kontakt scripting that the good sampled pianos have, we would have an instrument that I don't think people could tell is not PianoTeq (or the V).

The advantage I see (and that you implicitly point out) to computing the sound on the fly rather than having it already stored up is superior tweakability of the sound. Modeled pianos unquestionably are more tweakable, but that only matters if we agree that a major problem of sampled pianos is that they are not sufficiently tweakable. The latter is a statement I, at least, do not agree with.

Certain interactions and resonances can be easily added to modeled pianos, which is nice. That was one of the primary original arguments for modeled pianos. But we have observed these interactions being added to sampled pianos, so sampled technology does not inherently preclude them.

In either case, the differences in the technology are nothing like the difference between playing and listening. The computer is thinking on the fly, but its calculations are completely deterministic, so they may as well be pre-computed or sampled.

A modeled DP generates sound when you press the key, just like an acoustic piano. The quality of the sound is not pre-determined from a previous recording, just as an acoustic piano doesn't have its own finite 'store' of sounds to trot out when the pianist plays.

A sampled DP has prerecorded samples, the number of which is finite and therefore limited, no matter how much processing occurs afterwards to produce the eventual sound.

This isn't a meaningful distinction, though. There is no difference between 5 and the sum of 2 and 3. One required you to compute it on the fly while I provided you with the other.

For both modeled and sampled pianos, for a given configuration and input velocity, the resulting sound will be exactly the same every time. In other words we could record the sounds produced by PianoTeq's computations (or the V) and make a sampled piano out of them. If we do the decent Kontakt scripting that the good sampled pianos have, we would have an instrument that I don't think people could tell is not PianoTeq (or the V).

I think there is a flaw in your logic, if I understand what you're saying. I'm not familiar with computer language, so I'll have to explain using my own simple terms.

It's the difference between stepped and stepless sound. The sampled DP has a set number of pre-stored sounds from which all its sounds are based i.e. processed to get the in-between sounds that are required between the pre-recorded 'steps'. It's like the difference between stepped auto-focusing for early autofocus point-and-shoot cameras (assuming you are old enough to have used them), and the stepless auto-focusing as used in SLR cameras of that time, and of course, universal today, where the lens has no pre-determined step but focuses exactly on the object you're pointing its sensor at. For those point-and-shoots, the more steps the better, but the focusing was never totally precise, because there was a finite number of steps. (My first such camera had just three steps - close-up, 'portrait distance' and infinity/landscape, and relied on depth-of-field to give acceptable sharpness.)

OK, in the sampled DP, the computer helps by processing the nearest 'step' to get an approximation of the sound required by the particular key strike, but it's still a processed step, and it shows in its response, which doesn't quite ring true, and therefore reminds you you're playing on an electronic instrument. Or, to put it another way, you play a key a certain way to get a sound of 5.347, but there are only 10 samples recorded for that note (i.e. 1 to 10). So the computer chooses the nearest, 5, and processes the sound to get maybe 5.3 which is close but not exactly what you're looking for. And you 'detect' that the extra 0.3 isn't quite from source, but added to it.

When you play one note on a sampled DP and repeat it several times exactly (as far as humanly possible) without pedal, you hear exactly the same sound. It's quite uncanny, and you just don't get this from an acoustic, because other factors come into play - the very slight differences between each keystrike get magnified by the resonances that are generated. And this is also what you get from the V-Piano because it too is able to pick up on the very slight differences, which subsequently get magnified by the random resonances. It is (or rather, you are) a human playing after all, not a machine, and the 'butterfly effect' takes over.

_________________________
"I don't play accurately - anyone can play accurately - but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life."

The first part of your description essentially criticizes the fact that there aren't many layers in a sampled piano. American D, for example, has only 20 or so. MIDI allows 128, so that is what you get with PianoTeq or (afaik) the V. Whether the difference between 20 timbres and 128 is meaningful could be debated. Of course, with layer blending, you essentially have 128 distinct timbres with a sampled piano as well (Ivory uses some kind of layer morphing/blending according to their marketing). Of course, there are also sampled pianos with a full 128 layers (Imperfect Samples Fazioli extreme) for example. In that case you have precisely the same number of timbres as a modeled piano. You don't see people dropping Ivory in favor of Imperfect Samples wholesale, though. In part that's because the extra granularity in layers doesn't make much difference. Of course, if you are comparing the V to a P155 with 4 layers, the difference in granularity is much larger.

I can't really argue with your point about the timbre of a note changing with repeats. That's probably right. I would classify it as one of those things that sampled pianos to date have not yet implemented as far as we have seen. Historically we have seen sampled pianos improve as quickly as modeled pianos (or some might say more quickly) so I suspect these types of nuances will appear in sampled pianos before modeled pianos satisfy really picky people.

But you are right, some people are more sensitive to limitations of sampled pianos and others, modeled. Thankfully it appears that both technologies are improving. Personally, I'd love to own a V. It would make a great controller for Galaxy.

Except that a computer algorithm that 'models' a piano isn't 'stepless' either.

That a modeled piano is 'stepless' is your assumption, one that has no technical merit unfortunately. You see for an algorithm or model to be truly 'stepless' it would require a system of infinite resolution - a truly 'analogue' system.

Unfortunately we're squarely in the realm of digital systems, that take and process discrete, quantifiable values. These values have a finite resolution and there is an upper bound on the amount of data that can be stored and processed and also on the number of individual different values (resolution) a single datum can have.

8 bit = 256 individual values. 16 bit = 65535 individual values etc.

The Sensors that measure the amount of force you excert on a key are digital, the modeling algorithms and sound processing are digital so both have a fixed upper bound on the resolution or 'number of steps' that they can discern. The digital to analog converter (that converts the numbers into sound waves) also is digital.

Since your whole system deals with digital values and has technically 'lost' information due to the discretisation (conversion of a continuous signal of 'infinite' resolution into quantifiable digital values) of an analogue signal and the digital processing the digital to analog conversion cannot magically add the parts of the signal lost or never recorded/created.

Therefore a modeled piano also only has a finite number of individual sounds it can create. To overcome that one would have to build a truly analogue model of a grand piano - the grand piano itself.

Given that the number of individual samples is enough to match the number of individual steps the modeling algorithm can create then there would be no discernable difference between both approaches and you wouldn't be able to tell which is which.

Since your whole system deals with digital values and has technically 'lost' information due to the discretisation (conversion of a continuous signal of 'infinite' resolution into quantifiable digital values) of an analogue signal and the digital processing the digital to analog conversion cannot magically add the parts of the signal lost or never recorded/created.

Not nearly as limiting as you describe. For instance, audio quantized in both time and instantaneous level can be perfectly reconstructed in the bandwidth limited continuous domains with the only result of the quatization being some residual SNR. Done correctly it won't cause a perceptual loss of any kind.

Since your whole system deals with digital values and has technically 'lost' information due to the discretisation (conversion of a continuous signal of 'infinite' resolution into quantifiable digital values) of an analogue signal and the digital processing the digital to analog conversion cannot magically add the parts of the signal lost or never recorded/created.

Not nearly as limiting as you describe. For instance, audio quantized in both time and instantaneous level can be perfectly reconstructed in the bandwidth limited continuous domains with the only result of the quatization being some residual SNR. Done correctly it won't cause a perceptual loss of any kind.

Many oversampled converters modulate a single bit!

You lot have completely lost me there.....my V beckons, methinks.

_________________________
"I don't play accurately - anyone can play accurately - but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life."

Not nearly as limiting as you describe. For instance, audio quantized in both time and instantaneous level can be perfectly reconstructed in the bandwidth limited continuous domains with the only result of the quatization being some residual SNR. Done correctly it won't cause a perceptual loss of any kind.

That's just arguing semantics. We could quarrel about the exact definition of 'residual SNR' or '(no) perceptual loss of quality' all day, technically you lose information since you essentially cut off everything above a certain arbitrarily defined frequency threshold. That's why I used the term 'technically'.

We could argue if the loss of information is significant or noticeable but since we're debating the supposed superiority of modeling vs. sampling on the basis of better recreation of sound that would be a slippery slope.

Quote:

Many oversampled converters modulate a single bit!

Yeah, that's why they use oversampling the number of bits doesn't really have any significance here since the sampling technique is different.